Alain Juppé pulls ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy in primary race

PARIS — Alain Juppé has restored a commanding lead over his rivals —including former President Nicolas Sarkozy — in a race to win the French Right’s nomination for president, a poll showed Wednesday.

Juppé, a former prime minister, was neck-and-neck with Sarkozy in August, according to the monthly Kantar Sofres poll for Le Figaro and RTL. But Sarkozy lost a poll bump he enjoyed after officially declaring his candidacy on August 22, and Juppé made up the lost ground, re-establishing himself as a clear frontrunner.

Juppé is now seen winning 39 percent of votes in round one of a two-round November primary open to centrist and conservative voters, versus 34 percent in August. His former boss Sarkozy would win 34 percent of the vote, down one percentage point from the previous month.

In the runoff round, Juppé is seen prevailing with 59 percent of the vote versus 41 percent for Sarkozy.

“Sarkozy’s official campaign launch, even though it was widely expected, created a dynamic whose effects are now largely exhausted,” said Carine Marcé, head of the Kantar Public agency.

According to the poll, one reason for Juppé’s increased support is the fact that more centrist voters now plan to participate in the primary: 15 percent, versus 11 percent previously.

Deepening gulf

Juppé is more popular than Sarkozy among centrists and is banking on a high turnout from them in November to cement his nomination. By contrast, Sarkozy believes that only right-wing voters and members of the Républicains party will turn out to vote, and has focused narrowly on them.

On style and substance, the gulf between the two frontrunners’ became more sharply defined after Sarkozy kicked off his campaign officially. The former president tacked hard to the Right, making headlines with proposals to declare a “total war” on terrorism and lock up suspected terrorist sympathizers, while his advice to immigrants to recognize “the Gauls” as their ancestors generated days of Donald Trump-style controversy.

Juppé, meanwhile, dug in as a moderate.

Eschewing Sarkozy’s divisive stance on identity politics, he defended his call for a “happy identity” even after his rival had mocked the phrase as being naïve and out of touch with widespread anxiety about terrorism and the purported spread of political Islam.

The 71-year-old’s gains came at the expense of other contestants in the race, which is now looking more and more like a Juppé-Sarkozy duel. Bruno Le Maire, a former agriculture minister, fell back to 13 percent support in September versus 17 percent the previous month, while former Prime Minister François Fillon dropped one percentage point to eight percent.

Still, the pollster warned that the outcome of November’s primary was far from being set in stone.

“The very strong gyrations we register from one survey to the next … show that the vote is not crystallized,” added Marcé.

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Tom Cullem

“Sarkozy’s official campaign launch, even though it was widely expected, created a dynamic whose effects are now largely exhausted,”

Well, it’s hard to keep basing your campaign on “forcing” Britain to take Calais migrants when the Calais camp is finally being closed and the migrants, many of whom are giving up the idea of getting to Britain from farther inside France and are now wiling to file for asylum in France.